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On the north and east are the Koolau and Kaupo Gaps, as deep as the crater, through which oceans of lava found their way to the sea. It looks as if the volcanic forces, content with rending the mountain top in twain, had then passed into an endless repose.
"Tomorrow there will be fighting. It is well to sleep and be prepared." The lepers obeyed, crawling away to their lairs in the cliff, until only Koolau remained, sitting motionless in the moonlight, his rifle across his knees, as he gazed far down to the boats landing on the beach. The far head of Kalalau Valley had been well chosen as a refuge.
"Then your people are wiser than you," answered the young captain. "Look they are coming now." Koolau turned and watched the remnant of his band approach. Groaning and sighing, a ghastly procession, it dragged its wretchedness past.
The two idiots shrieked with delight, prancing wild antics as each air- tormenting shell went by. Koolau began to recover his confidence. No damage was being done. Evidently they could not aim such large missiles at such long range with the precision of a rifle. But a change came over the situation. The shells began to fall short. One burst below in the thicket by the knife-edge.
He was a smooth- faced, blue-eyed youngster of twenty-five, slender and natty in his captain's uniform. He advanced until halted, then seated himself a dozen feet away. "You are a brave man," said Koolau wonderingly. "I could kill you like a fly." "No, you couldn't," was the answer. "Why not?" "Because you are a man, Koolau, though a bad one. I know your story. You kill fairly."
And I drowned my shame in large drinks of rum and whisky, till the world went round and round, inside my head and out, and the Southern Cross danced a hula in the sky, and the Koolau Mountains bowed their lofty summits to Waikiki and the surf of Waikiki kissed them on their brows.
But at the first pitch of the wall his helplessness overcame him and he fell back. "It would be better to kill him," said Koolau to Kapahei, who still sat in the same place. "Twenty-two," Kapahei answered. "Yes, it would be a wise thing to kill him. Twenty-three twenty-four." The idiot whined sharply when he saw the rifle levelled at him. Koolau hesitated, then lowered the gun.
It is ten miles in diameter, and the bottom lies 2000 feet below where you stand. The vast irregular floor contains more than a dozen subsidiary craters or great cones, some of them 750 feet high, and nearly as large as Diamond Head. At the Kaupo and Koolau gaps, indicated on the map, the lava is supposed to have burst through and made its way down the mountain sides.
Even as he ran, Koolau saw a spout of black smoke rise from the ground, near to the idiots. They were flung apart bodily by the explosion. One lay motionless, but the other was dragging himself by his hands toward the cave. His legs trailed out helplessly behind him, while the blood was pouring from his body. He seemed bathed in blood, and as he crawled he cried like a little dog.
"Koolau, I am coming across to get you." "Then look first and well about you at the sun and sea and sky, for it will be the last time you behold them." "That's all right, Koolau," the sheriff said soothingly. "I know you're a dead shot. But you won't shoot me. I have never done you any wrong." Koolau grunted in the thicket.
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